LITMIR.BIZ

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quickly checked his pulse and removed his glasses to look into his eyes. No, it couldn’t be! she thought.

      “Son of a bitch!” Mildred gasped in horror. “Everybody, get the fuck out of the water!”

      Startled by her tone, the rest of the companions needed no further prompting to slosh out of the lake as fast as they could.

      “What’s wrong with him?” Ryan demanded, every instinct honed in a thousand battles suddenly alert.

      But Mildred didn’t answer. Instead, she turned away from everybody and rammed two stiff fingers down her throat, trying to induce vomiting. It took Ryan an instant to understand, then he threw away the canteen with a curse. Poisoned. The whole bastard lake was poisoned!

      While the rest of the companions frantically tried to do the same thing, they noticed the waterfall was starting to sound muted, as if in the distance, and soon their movements took on a vague dreamlike quality.

      With his own vision failing, Ryan tried to help, but having drunk so much water, the effect seemed to be hitting him the hardest. The world was already going dark, his strength dwindling fast. Dropping the Steyr, the man clumsily drew the panga and cut his arm, hoping the pain would help him stay awake. But Ryan barely felt the passage of the steel through his skin and knew that it was already too late. Enraged over the failure to recognize the trap, Ryan felt an adrenaline surge course through his body. But the brief respite vanished almost as quickly as it had come, and, still fighting to remain conscious, Ryan slumped to the ground and went still. The rest of the companions followed suit only a few seconds later.

      Soon, there was no movement at the crystal lake, aside from the steady rush of the waterfall and the bright sunlight reflecting off the gentle waves.

      Chapter Three

      Lost in a dreamy world of muzzy thoughts and sensations for an unknown length of time, Ryan awoke sluggishly, feeling as if he was going to be sick. His stomach ached fiercely, and the world was rocking back and forth. Dimly, the man wondered if he was inside a redoubt suffering through a bout of jump sickness, which always hit the companions after using the mat-trans unit.

      The redoubts were the greatest secret of the predark world, and even more so now. Built before skydark, they were military underground bunkers, constructed to withstand a direct hit by a thermonuclear weapon. The secret bases were safe havens of clean water and sterilized air, equipped with hot showers, washing machines, storerooms full of food, medicine, vehicles and weapons of every type imaginable. At least, they were originally. Sometime after the atomic holocaust, all of the military personnel assigned to the redoubts left, taking most of the supplies with them. Nowadays, the companions considered themselves lucky to find a single dented can of stew forgotten in the kitchen, or to scavenge a handful of live bullets that had rolled under a shelf. But sometimes they hit the jackpot.

      Much more important were the mat-trans units. These fantastic machines were able to transmit the companions from one redoubt to another in a few seconds. Unfortunately, the knowledge of how to control a jump had been lost over time, so every journey through the machines was now blind chance. Even then, the redoubts and the mat-trans unit gave the companions a chilling superiority to everybody else in the world—mobility.

      It was a fact that Ryan was starting to appreciate more as he slowly began to notice the splintery wood under his cheek. The floor of a mat-trans was smoother than silk. So, where the frag am I? he wondered.

      Suddenly, the events at the waterfall came rushing back, and Ryan sat up, clawing for the blaster at his hip. But the weapon was gone, along with everything else he owned, including his outer clothing. Even his eye patch was missing.

      Trying to focus his good eye against the constant bouncing, Ryan glanced around to see that he was inside some sort of a wooden cage. The floor was covered with dirty hay, the bars were thicker than his wrist and the door was set into the ceiling a good ten feet high. The man had to grunt at that. Smart. It would be triple-hard for any prisoner to escape when they couldn’t even reach the bastard door.

      Outside the cage, a rolling grassland stretched to the horizon. A few trees were scattered around, along with the occasional stand of cacti and bushes, but the grass itself was a deep emerald-green. There was no smell of salt in the air. Wherever this was, they were a long way from the desert. Just how long have I been out, Ryan wondered, rubbing the stubble on his chin.

      Scattered around the squalid cage were the rest of the companions, clad only in their undergarments and clutching their heads as if in pain. The bouncing came from the fact that the cage was in the back of a large buckboard wag. Ryan could dimly see the two drivers sitting in the front seat, one of them holding a crossbow, and the other man working a set of reins. As he gave them a shake, several horses whinnied and the bouncing got worse.

      Slavers. Ryan cursed quietly. The sons of bitches had to have dosed the water and then simply sat back to wait for parched fools to come racing out of the Great Salt and straight into their waiting chains. The man felt like a feeb, but pushed those thoughts aside to concentrate on how to escape.

      There came a rustle from the largest pile of hay.

      “You okay, lover?” Krysty whispered from inside the pile of loose material. Both shapely legs stuck out from the green hay, her full breasts just barely concealed. Her face was calm, but her hair flexed wildly, showing that she was furious.

      “More importantly, are you?” Ryan countered, studying her for any sign that she’d been raped while they’d been unconscious.

      “Nobody rode me,” Krysty answered softly, casting a glance at the fat men in the front of the wag. “Nor Mildred, either. But I don’t think we’re likely to stay that way for long.”

      “Not likely,” Ryan agreed grimly, rubbing his unshaved jaw. There were two other wags in the convoy, the cages in the back jammed full of scrawny people. However, Krysty and Mildred were the only adult females with some flesh on their bones, and all of the slavers were men, not a single woman among their ranks. Yeah, come nightfall, things would get ugly.

      “I am glad to see you back, my dear Ryan,” Doc rumbled, wiping his mouth on the back of a hand. “I had feared that your consumption of the tainted water may have taken you across the River Styx.”

      “Not aced yet,” Ryan stated, flexing his hands, feeling the strength slowly return.

      “Got a plan yet, buddy?” J.B. asked, reaching up to adjust his glasses. With a start, the man frowned when his fingers only touched bare skin. Dark night! the Armorer thought. Without those I’m nearsighted to the point of being blind! About as useful as a dick on a cactus.

      “Working on it,” Ryan murmured, studying the cage and wag.

      “Work faster,” Jak whispered, picking up an old piece of string and using it to tie back his long hair. Although only a teenager, the albino youth was covered with a wide assortment of scars forming a rippled pattern caused by being caught in acid rain, knife cuts, laser burns and the circles showing a healed bullet wound.

      Deep in thought, Ryan merely grunted in reply. If this had been an iron cage that would have been another matter. But these wooden cages were generally the providence of slavers. Cannibals used iron cages because they didn’t really care if the prisoners banged their heads against the bars and took their own lives. They were going into the cooking pot either way, and beating themselves up only made the meat more tender. However, slavers used wood, sometimes with canvas padding wrapped around the bars, because they needed the merchandise alive and relatively undamaged.

      Carefully, Ryan studied the other two wags, noting their positions in the caravan, then he turned his full attention to the two men in the front of their wag. Both were fat, but with broad shoulders and wide hands, suggesting that some of their girth came from being large men. The driver had a mustache, the gunner was bald, and each was armed with a machete, a club and a bullwhip—but not any of the blasters taken from the companions. Fireblast! He had been counting on the slavers carrying the weapons on them.

      Unfortunately, aside from the green hay, bits of string

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